Often computer systems are configured to perform many separate and independent tasks. In order to efficiently and cleanly allocate resources to the various tasks, many enterprises run a plurality of separate virtual machines (VMs) in parallel on a single server computer in a virtualized and distributed environment. Example systems for executing multiple VMs on servers include the ESX, ESXi, and vSphere products distributed by VMware, Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif.
Many virtualization servers provide hard drive storage for their VMs on the same machines that run the respective VMs. However, in some situations, it may be desirable to offload the storage onto an external data storage system.